Reminiscence
by isaybabelfish
Summary: Time has a way of blending into itself. D/Hr. Please read and review.


Reminiscence  
a D/Hr fanfic

Disclaimer: All characters belong to the lovely Ms. Rowling.

It is dusk.

Her head is soft on his shoulder; the curls pillow in the nook that feels as though it was made just for her. They are so close that he can feel the steady beating of her heart through her robes, and the even rise and fall of her chest, and it is comfort like he has never known.

The light of the setting sun catches on her hair, reflecting off the honey-brown strands that glint, incandescent, in the rays. _Like amber, _he thinks, _or perhaps fire. Something luminous, something warm. A light._

_A beacon of light in the midst of his darkness._

He thinks of her, and her warmth, and how he should be angry and upset about how she has invaded his life and taken all his senses captive and made him confused like he's never been, but he doesn't feel that way. When he tries to look for a memory that doesn't have her in it, he fails; time has risen and fallen and blended everything he's ever known into something that's tinged distinctly with her.

---

_First Year_

Usually he hates train rides. The intrusion of privacy, having to share a cabin with ten other doddering idiots. The lack of a proper bed and proper food – who does this pumpkin pastry nonsense, anyhow? And of course, the _rules_. Sit still, don't run about and don't hex anyone.

The Mudblood had severely tested his determination to follow through with that order.

Bushy-haired and buck-toothed – ugly in every sense of the word. A Mudblood, too. But the arrogance! The way she carried herself, it was as though she had the lineage of every Pureblood family running through her veins. _We'll take her down a peg,_ he thinks. _Show her who magic is truly meant for._

"That doesn't look like a real spell to me."

Right on cue, her amazingly irritating voice cuts in – the manifestation of getting under your skin. The irritation is so intense he is having trouble stopping himself from charging into the cabin and hexing her seven ways to Africa.

A real spell? I'll show you one. Just you wait. 

---

_Second Year_

It's terribly amusing.

So far, he has counted the number of times he has been told that he's been suspected of being the Heir of Slytherin – at last count, 48, according to Crabbe and Goyle. Although he is not too certain about their ability with numbers beyond 1, 2 and 3.

Actually, he wouldn't mind. Who _would_ mind some monster running around the castle at your beck and call? _Pity_, he thought. _I could use it to knock off Granger._

A year might have passed since he first saw her on the train, but the time hadn't diluted her power to irritate him any. _It's embarrassing,_ he thought to himself. _You'd think I'd be immune to it now. Or that I'd at least gotten one up on her and her pathetic gang._

With that. he immediately strengthens his resolve to double his efforts.

---

_Third Year_

"_Come here."_

He freezes.

"_Must I repeat myself? Come here now, or I will __make__ you."_

His father's voice is like ice, cold and chilling and cutting right to the bone. Reluctantly, he moves forward and kneels in front of the man of whom he is a replica, his father in miniature.

"_I do believe I have made it clear that Malfoys do not fail."_

He nods.

"_And I do believe I have made it equally clear what the consequence of failure is."_

He knows these lines intimately, and what is about to come even more. When the first curse hits him, he curls into a ball and seizes his legs and grits his teeth, determined not to cry against the burning of his nerves inside his skin. When the second wave enfolds him, he digs his nails into his palms and tenses his muscles in a bid to stop flailing and thrashing. When the third, and thankfully last, comes, he fixes his eyes on the grain of the ceiling boards and wishes his father dead.

Through it all, he does not make a sound.

"Get up. If I am forced to repeat this…treatment, I assure you it will be ten times worse. Clear?" 

He nods through the haze of agony searing his vision. _A bit of care would be very much appreciated_, he thinks to himself, once his father is out of earshot. _Ice. A numbing potion. A drink of cool water. A soft bed. A soft touch. A-_

Suddenly, he finds himself thinking of Granger, standing by the werewolf's desk, the worry and concern spilling out of her gaze, care oozing out of her pores with every touch of her fingers on the professor's weather-beaten hands.

_Some of that would be nice._

Then he snaps back to reality.

It's just the pain talking, of course.

---

_Fourth Year_

As far as school dances go, he has to admit that this one is not bad.

There's snow falling from the ceiling and onto the ballroom floor (away from the tables, of course. Who could eat with snow on their food?) as well as great dangling ice chandeliers. The food looks sumptuous; inwardly he is smiling at the fact that Malfoy Manor could not be seeing as grand a Christmas.

On his arm, Pansy is simpering about how dashing he looks and how spectacular everything is and how she saw Cho Chang snogging Diggory behind the greenhouses _and how his hands were under her shirt_ and quite frankly, he's fucking bored.

As he straightens up from downing his goblet of wine, his eye catches and lingers on something – someone- standing in the middle of the stairwell.

Granger.

_Only she's not Granger tonight, not quite. Her hair is not bushy any more but shiny and sleek and knotted up into a chignon, and she's standing taller and straighter_-

Irritably, he jerks himself back to Pansy's chatter, contributes a suitably vague comment about the Cho-Diggory scandal to mask his attention lapse and-

Her eyes look bigger and her dress looks like clouds that have been borrowed and rippled into a gauzy fabric and –

Stop. Stop. He bends over his lamb chops to hide his irritation with himself, only to have his traitorous eyes travel upwards and –

If ethereal could be manifested, it'd be her and those dainty fingers of hers and since when did she start looking like this and-

Ah, heck it.

She's bloody gorgeous.

---

_Fifth Year_

Dinner has never been quite so distracting.

Not the meal, of course. The events around him. Usually he's more than content to tuck into roast potatoes and steak without a second thought, but today he's up and alert like a rabbit and his eyes have landed on something.

Potter. And Granger.

They're arguing, which is a first, because he's never seen them argue in all their five years in this godforsaken school. To be fair, it's not a great screaming argument, but it's still a first. Potter is alternating between haphazard bites of potato and turning his head to make a sharp retort, but Granger has abandoned her meal and is focused on reprimanding him sharply, for what he doesn't know and cannot hear. Weasley, of course, is blissfully oblivious.

Then the action increases. Granger seizes Potter's hand and holds it up to the light- he strains to get a better look but she's put it back down- but then her stance changes; she's no longer angry, just…worried. She leans forward and takes Potter's hand in hers, when a movement under the table – his own table- startles him.

He looks down to see his fingers tighten involuntarily, squeezing a hand that isn't there.

When he looks up, she's put her hands on Potter's shoulders, and he feels a tingle run through his own.

---

_Sixth Year_

He'd never found Prefect patrols quite this boring.

To be sure, the castle is dark at night and it's fairly eerie, but the effect dies down when you've walk the halls at this hour for a year. His partner, Boot, is out for the night; he broke his ankle falling down the stairs (terribly stupid for a Ravenclaw). As such, he is out on his own for the night.

The rustle from around the corner startles him.

He pulls out his wand as the sound draws nearer; it's clearly footsteps now, and he can hear them but he can't see them and against his will it's beginning to get a little creepy-

"Malfoy!"

The female voice makes him jump; when he blinks and regains focus it turns out to be only Granger.

Only Granger. Standing in front of him. Alone. At eleven o'clock in the night.

"Granger. What are you doing here?"

"Didn't he tell you? Oh…I suppose he didn't, then. Boot asked me to help him cover for patrols for tonight so that his ankle can heal properly. He told me to tell you he'd be back tomorrow."

"Oh. I see."

"Yeah."

"Well. I've already covered the North Tower- took your time getting here, didn't you, Granger?"

He does not know why the words come out sounding so bitter. At first, she looks shocked, but then her features harden and her eyebrows crease, and she opens her mouth to bite back-

"No, forget what I said. I'm sorry. Forget it."

Surprised, she closes her mouth and looks at him oddly, a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"What's so funny?"

She looks at him furtively.

"You've changed, you know."

And then without another word, she starts off down the corridor.

---

_Seventh Year_

It was over so fast.

The fabled prophecy had finally been fulfilled; the Dark Lord had come to Hogwarts, and Potter had been waiting for him. The curses had flown thick and fast, the air had been rife with fear; but when the smoke cleared, the result was plain to see. The Dark Lord was smote upon the ground, and the scent of death lingered loosely in the folds of the empty black robes at Potter's feet.

At first, the world had gone crazy. Students seized each other, hugging in the corridors; joyous screaming rang out from all the towers, or at least what remained of them; but then the heavy weight of grief had settled itself upon the them, and then somehow he, Draco Malfoy, had found himself sitting by the lake, watching the sun's bloody rays turn the water an eerily familiar ruby red.

"It's really over, isn't it?"

Somehow the soft voice did not startle him; he'd grown used to hearing it. After all, it was the same voice that lived in his mind at night, replaying its owner's actions in his mind as he lay enclosed behind the drapes of his four-poster bed.

He'd gotten used to her voice. Her face. The grace with which she moved. The way her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes narrowed when she was angry. The way she'd laugh, with her hair falling over her face. The way she'd look after smaller students, the tender look in his eyes something he yearned to see directed at him.

He'd gotten used to her, period.

"It is. Believe it."

"You fought bravely…I didn't think you'd help us at first."

"You thought I'd help my father." He spits out the word with such vehemence that she flinches.

"Well, I did. But you proved me wrong."

"Don't you want to know why? Aren't you worried that I have some ulterior motive buried under this miraculous veneer of heroism?"

She doesn't reply, just settles down on the grass next to him.

"I trust you, Draco."

Her words are so simple and yet so resonant that he cannot think of a suitable response. Instead, he lets the silence do it for him, carrying between them all the words he does not quite know how to say.

She feels the silence too, as with the grief builds up behind her appearance of calm and wells up in the hollow space behind her eyes, like a river about to bust its dam.

His next words are very quiet.

"Go ahead."

It is all the catalyst she needs. She launches herself into his arms, the tears sounding like they are being ripped out of the base of her throat and wrenching her from the inside, taking with them a part of his soul, too.

---

When he disentangles himself from the threads of memories, he looks up to find himself exactly where he ended. He is still by the lake, and the sun is still casting its ruby rays across the lake; but he is older, and somewhat wiser, and carries with him the dignity that comes with experience.

Hermione is still next to him, but her eyes are not wet and her cheeks are not tear-stained. On the ground next to her are the certificates that declare them graduates of Hogwarts, all theirs as of a half hour ago. In her hand is a rose; he'd given it to her as she stepped off the stage and she'd fallen asleep holding it.

As though able to read his thoughts, she stirs gently in his arms, her hair brushing across his shoulder.

"You fell asleep."

'I know." She smiles up at him, her eyes and lips still smoky with the aftereffects of sleep. To him, she looks like a child; the sunlight illuminates her hair and frames her face in a way that makes him think of rosebuds and honey and a lingering, perfumed warmth. He pulls her close, kisses the top of her head.

"Where are you going to go from here?"

Her question makes him pause. To be honest, he hasn't thought that far. All his thoughts of late have been sensory whirlwinds of her, her and her alone – the smell of her skin, the warmth of her touch, the taste of her lips, the sound of her voice and the sight of her, nestled in his arms, truly his.

But as he looks at her, he realises that he doesn't really care. What matters is that they're here, together, and that in this moment, time is infinite.

And that's enough for him.

_Finis_

A.N: Shamelessly fluffy, I know. This was written for a friend who's a huge D/Hr shipper. Any comments would be much appreciated (:


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